Chapter 6: System Day III

We entered the temple together, and I looked around in awe. There were marble pillars, and in the middle of the entryway, a large diamond-shaped symbol, with a gemstone on each corner and one in the middle. Painted frescos lined the wall: What was probably Etalix, wrapped in mist. Herculix fighting some sort of large dinosaur. White Dove and Black Crow, the grim reapers from above. Army legions victorious over large insects. The famous run of Fulguris. The sentinel Gideon, burning with the dark flames he was famous for. And many, many more, each probably with historical significance and martial victory that someone would probably be all too happy to tell me about if I asked. I didn’t ask.

“Good morning” a man with a pockmarked face, marking him as a survivor of any number of the poxes and plagues that went about regularly, greeted us. “Are you here for System Day?” he asked with exceeding politeness.

“Yes!” I responded as enthusiastically as I could, although not as loudly as possible. The temple was intimidating. At the same time, mom gave a much more reserved “Yes”. I glared at her with all the ferocity I could muster. It was my day. No stealing it.

“Third door on the left” he gently told us.

With bold strides and butterflies bouncing in my belly, I entered the indicated room. There were three other kids in beige sitting on the floor in front of an older priestly-looking gentleman in a chair, and there were various implements scattered around the edge of the room. There was a bowl of water, a hammer, a rope, and dozens more little objects scattered all over. There was even a modest patch of dirt! At the back of the room, prominently displayed, was another one of those diamonds with 5 gems in it, but much smaller. I looked around puzzled as everyone’s attention came around to me.

“Hello there. I’m Sacerdus. What’s your name?”

I got a warm fuzzy feeling from the elderly priest standing at the front of the room. He was tall, in a long white robe with simple sandals on his feet. White hair, white beard, and it was clear he spent time in the sun, he practically radiated comfort, confidence, and relaxation. Heck, for all I knew, he literally was radiating all of those!

“I’m Elaine” I fidgeted, eyes on the floor.

“Well Elaine, why don’t you sit down with everyone else? We’ll get started soon.”

I looked around, and saw Lyra! How did I miss her first-time round? She clearly saw me as well, and jumped up to hug me!

“Lyra!” I exclaimed, completely forgetting where we were.

“Elaine!” Just as happily.

“Ahem.” A cough came from Sacerdus. Mom was glaring murder at me. Oh gods I was going to get the spoon later.

Fortunately, I was spared further conversation as a boy wearing a green tunic and his father came in.

“Hello there. I’m Sacerdus. What’s your name?” Sacerdus said again, without any sign of impatience or annoyance.

The boy drew himself up to his full height, and with all the haughtiness he could muster responded with “Olympus Kerberos Titus.” I rolled my eyes to myself as he strutted forward, and plonked himself down in front of all of us. Um, hello? The remaining four of us are sitting in a line, who are you to sit in front of us all? Should I say something? But Sacerdus isn’t saying anything, he’s just keeping his happy smile on.

As I was debating what to do, Sacerdus pre-empted me by talking.

“Well! I’m glad to see everyone’s here. Just checking – everyone has less than seven days left on their timer? Raise your hand if you do!” He said as he raised his hand in demonstration.

64 hours and change left. Yup, that was me! Strange that he didn’t say it in hours, although nobody here seemed to use them. I raised my hand with everyone else.

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“Good! Let’s begin. First, I’d like to say thank you to Kerberos’s father, Citizen Prasinos. He, and Citizen Arotro and Citizen Fyto together grow about three in ten crops that we eat here in Aquiliea.” He gestured to three men standing in the back in full purple robes.

The three citizens in the back nodded thanks at the acknowledgement.

Sacerdus turned around, and grabbed a scroll off of the altar.

“I’m going to start by ????? our history off of the !!!!!!”

He unraveled the scroll, and started reading off of it. “It’s currently 4788 years post-creation. In the beginning, the five major gods created…” I completely missed everything else he said – at long last, I had the word for reading, and the word for scroll! It wasn’t a book, but I could now finally ask for reading lessons! Books would have to be involved, and then I could finally read again!

I hadn’t seen Lyra in ages (ok fine two days), and we spent some time putting our heads together, whispering frantically to get caught up.

“Did you get in trouble for the…?” I started. I didn’t need to finish the sentence; Lyra knew exactly what I was referring to. The latest Incident. The reason it had been two whole days since last seeing the other half of my soul.

“Nope!” She cheekily grinned.

“Lucky.” I muttered back.

“Any questions?” he asked. Shit. I had completely missed everything he said! This was System Day! I needed to focus! I did my best poker face, hoping that I hadn’t missed anything, and more importantly, mom hadn’t noticed me whispering with Lyra.

“Good. Moving on. We don’t know where the System comes from, but it’s what gives us classes and skills. It’s what lets us stay alive in this world. It’s the foundation of nearly everything we do, and we’d fall prey to the creatures outside of our borders without it. Even with it, we’re at risk. Everyone needs to do their part so humanity as a whole can survive, and maybe even beat the Formorians.”

That caught my attention. I had arrogantly assumed that humanity was the top dog. I hadn’t seen or heard much to contradict that idea in my short time here, but then again, who tells kids anything? But humanity isn’t doing great? There was some enemy called the Formorians? That was news to me. With great effort I stopped looking around while listening, and put my entire focus on Sacerdus.

“Nearly everything has a System. Anything bigger than a bug has a system, although it seems like only humans and intelligent monsters get classes. As you’ve all noticed,” he chuckled “when you’re born, your system is locked. Humans all have the same timer, but it seems like monsters each get their own, different timer. Why this is, we don’t know, but we believe it’s to stop babies from killing themselves.” Sacerdus went from smiling to serious. “If you get nothing else out of System Day, just know that improperly using the system and allocating your traits can and will kill you. Each time you level up a physical trait, you lose some of your mana regeneration. If you allow your mana regeneration to dip below 0, you’ll start to burn mana just to stay alive. You’ll quickly hit 0 mana, and then your body will eat itself from the inside out. It’s not pretty. It’s not fun. It’s Very Bad.” He emphasized, talking to us like we were children.

Which we were. Fair enough.

Sacerdus repeated himself, along with dire warnings about allocating stats.

“Any questions?”

I looked over my stats.

[Free Stats: 0] [Strength: 4]

[Dexterity: 6]

[Vitality: 3]

[Speed: 4]

[Mana: 2]

[Mana Regeneration:2]

[Magic Power: 2]

[Magic Control: 2]

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